Sean Nero

Olympic medal­list Richard Thomp­son says he is proud to have record­ed his first sub-ten per­for­mance in two years at Sat­ur­day's IAAF World Chal­lenge's Fan­ny Blankers-Keon, held in Hen­ge­lo, Nether­lands.

The three-time Olympic medal­list cap­tured the men's 100 me­tres event in 9.95 sec­onds.

On his Face­book page, he post­ed, "Got an­oth­er win tonight in Hen­ge­lo (Hol­land). This time a wind le­gal 9.95 sec­onds, my first sub-10 since the 2012 Lon­don Olympics...3rd fastest time in the World for 2014. Prais­es to the most high!"

In a G-Sport in­ter­view, he made it clear, how­ev­er, that the grat­i­fy­ing week­end per­for­mance was not grounds for him to be­come over con­fi­dent. The cham­pi­on ath­lete said he need­ed to re­tain his lev­el of calm and fo­cus, as the re­me­di­al work he was now un­der­go­ing was help­ing him to achieve the de­sired re­wards.

"It feels great to be un­der 10 sec­onds again. How­ev­er, it's no time to cel­e­brate or be con­tent. There's still a lot of work to be done. That be­ing said, I'm pleased with the di­rec­tion things are head­ing in for the Com­mon­wealth Games, which is my num­ber one pri­or­i­ty this year. Be­ing at the Michael John­son Per­for­mance Cen­tre (MJPC) in Dal­las, re­al­ly, al­lowed me to chan­nel my en­er­gy in the right di­rec­tion. We iden­ti­fied what the prob­lem was and de­vised a plan to di­rect­ly deal with it. Be­yond that, we were able to look at oth­er weak­ness­es and strength­en them."

Thomp­son has gained ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ties at MJPC through an arrange­ment be­tween the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and en­er­gy com­pa­ny BPTT.

He achieved the feat on the week­end of his birth­day, which was spent trav­el­ing to Eu­rope.

"So it was a bit sat­is­fy­ing to run well and make up for the day lost. There's still a lot of time for many peo­ple to im­prove, so I don't want to get ahead of my­self and start pre­ma­ture­ly claim­ing medals in Glas­gow (Scot­land) just yet.

"Every­one is still work­ing hard and that's just what I plan to do as well, to give my­self a fair shot of be­ing in the mix. It will be in­ter­est­ing be­cause we know the big guns al­ways show up ready to the big show."

Late yes­ter­day, Thomp­son won the 100m at the Bislett Games in Oslo, Nor­way in a time of 10.02 sec­onds.